Scifi Author, Engineer, Sharpshooter, part-time Dæmon Prince of Tzeentch. Not a cat. DevonEriksen.com
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If you like scifi…
If you are sick of stories of dystopian whining and post-apocalyptic despair…
If you're wondering what the hell happened to the industry that gave us Neuromancer and The Mote in God's Eye and Dune…
Then I made you something nice
amazon.com/dp/B0CJHQ4LZN
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I am surprised nobody asked me what a Strong Toad is.
After a day as terrible as the one he’d just had, Harry was more than ready to shamble back to the Gryffindor dormitory, throw himself onto his narrow bed without so much as pulling back the covers, much less undressing.
But as he climbed, the noises coming down the stairs from the boys’ section told him this probably wasn’t going to happen.
It sounded like someone ransacking one of the rooms. There were definite rummaging noises, punctuated occasionally by the sound of a thrown object bouncing off a wall or some furniture, and a muted sputtering, as if someone were trying to swear in frustration, but couldn’t, not really, because she didn’t actually know all that many bad words.
Wait.
She?
Harry bounded up the last few stairs, and the hall, and through the door. Then stopped dead in his tracks.
Even though he had already heard what was happening, what he saw was the last thing, the very last thing, the absolutely last thing, that he ever expected to find.
It was Malfoy.
She stood over Harry’s bed, surrounded by a scattering of Harry’s possession all over the floor, spilled from an overturned chest, all the drawers she has removed from his dresser.
No one else seemed to be around.
Harry was too surprised even to be properly angry. He could only sputter out the first thing that popped into his mind.
“Malfoid? What are you doing here?”
She whirled to face him, her face twisted in a furious expression. There were dust bunnies clinging to her skirt, and her hair was an absolute mess.
“Stop calling me that! My name is Draecina! Dray-see-na! Draecina Esmerelda Aribeth Malfoy! The Third!”
Harry rallied his thoughts a bit. “I’m not going to say all that. And you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? How did you even get into the Gryffindor dormitory at all?”
“Fairy lights,” she snarled at him, “The password is ‘fairy lights’. Did you really think I couldn’t get that information out of one of you weak-minded idiots any time I wanted?
“Except the last place, the very last place, that I would be caught dead is your bedr— your dorm room! If I didn’t need to find it!”
“Find what?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Potter! You know what I’m looking for! A doll! Made out of beeswax infused with moonleaf sap and three drops of my blood, which you probably collected last year when we fought the Bandersnatch. Then you dressed it in a scrap of my clothing that you stole from somewhere, and bound the neck, wrists, and ankles with three strands of your hair!”
Harry was far too surprised to say anything. He’d never seen or even heard of any doll like that, of course. But the description seemed oddly… specific.
“Does that sound familiar, Potter? I found the spell you used! It took me a year of searching through half the library, but I found it! Now tell me where the blasted doll is so I can take this curse off!”
She kicked a pile of what turned out to be Harry’s spare robes, and then looked disappointed that they didn’t fly very far.
“Malfoid —”
“Draecina!”
“— I have no idea what you’re talking about. What curse? Did someone curse you?”
“Of course they — of course you did! Just look at me!”
Harry was looking at her. Same pale blonde hair, so blonde it was more snow than gold. This was the first time Harry had ever seen so much as a strand of it out of place. Same dainty, aristocratic features, upturned nose and pointy chin. Come to think of it, those green eyes, smoldering with fury, had slight dark shadows under them for once.
And her wrists seemed the same, too. For some reason, Harry’s gaze always seemed to linger on her wrists, on how very pale and delicate they looked, on how they always seemed to pose at some elegant angle.
“I… ah… can’t stop looking at you.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“I mean, because you’re standing in the middle of my room throwing all my stuff on the floor. If there’s some sort of curse on you, I don’t see any effect. What’s it supposed to do?”
“Hah! As if you didn’t know! There’s no one here but the two of us, so there’s no point in pretending you don’t know!”
“Malf — ah, Draecina, I really have no idea what you’re talking about. How do you know you’re under a curse, and what is it that’s happening?”
Her expression shifted from rage to… well, if it was anyone but Malfoy, Harry would have called it a pout.
“Oh, I see. You just want me to say it out loud, so you can humiliate me more. Well, I won’t. And I won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing me beg. So gloat if you have to, mudblood. Get it over with. Have your fun. Then. Take. It. Off.”
“Look, I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t cursed you.”
“Last year in potions class, you turned me purple!”
“Well, yes, that. But it wore off in a few hours. And you deserved it for hiding that Strong Toad in my locker. I mean I didn’t do it this time. If someone’s really cursed you, then couldn’t it be… well, you haven’t exactly been nice to a lot people, have you? It could have been anybody.”
“No, couldn’t! It has to be you, because you’re the one that I — arrrrrrghhh!”
She trailed off in a snarl of pure frustration, and then slowly and deliberately drew her wand out of her jacket and pointed it at Harry, squinting down the length of hazelwood.
“Harry Potter, you take this curse off me right now, or I’ll… I’ll… well, I’ll think of something equally awful to do to you!”
Harry didn’t doubt it. And only now it occurred to him that, like every wand carried by every student, it wasn’t just a tool, or a device for playing harmless pranks. Wands could be weapons, and some spells you could do with one were no laughing matter.
He thought about going for his own wand, trying a simple disabling spell to buy some time to talk sense into her. It wouldn’t be impossible. He usually beat her in Wizard Dueling practice.
On the other hand, her wand was already pointed right at him, which was more than a little bit of an advantage. Maybe he should just skip right to the talking-sense part.
Not that talking sense into Draecina Malfoy was ever the easy option.
“Look, Drae, I —”
Why did he call her that? Only her friends called her that.
“I really didn’t do anything to you this time. If it’s something really bad, can’t you just go to one of the instructors for help?”
“Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you? Me humiliating myself like that. Well, fine. If you’re sooooooo innocent, and you just have nooooo idea what I’m talking about, then prove it!”
“What?”
“Prove it!”
“How I supposed to prove —”
Malfoy tore at the neck of her blouse with her other hand, and a single button popped off, bouncing away somewhere into the mess, as she came up with a small pendant, hung around her neck on a black leather cord. Her hair mussed every which way again as she yanked it over her neck and head, and thrust it at him.
“There! See? I came prepared! Take it. Go on, take it!”
“What… is that?”
He could see it clearly enough, a little white stone on a gold bezel, shaped a bit like an egg, and carved with… well, carved with something. Not for the first time, Harry wished he had paid more attention in Runes class.
“It’s a Truthstone, idiot. Don’t you know anything? Why should any decent wizarding school waste its valuable time trying to educate useless mudbloods like you if you’re not going to come out any smarter than dirt?
“You hold it, stupid. Now put your grubby fingers on it and hold it up where I can see, and tell me the filthy lie you just told me. Say it again. I dare you. Say it again so I can put a hex on you that the entire faculty won’t be able to remove for a week. Er… as soon as I pick one out, I mean.”
Bemused, Harry reached out, very slowly, and took the stone from her. It seemed unusually cool in his fingers. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he could have just grabbed her wand and disarmed her instead, or at least tried to. But however this… Truthstone… worked, if it could prove he wasn’t lying, then perhaps he could find out what on earth was going on.
He held it up in front of his face, between thumb and forefinger. Stared past it into her green eyes that still glittered with suppressed rage.
“Okay, fine, look. I didn’t know you were under a curse, I have no idea what curse you might be under, I didn’t put it on you or ask anyone else to put it on you, and I have no idea who did. Okay?”
The stone… did nothing. Harry really had no idea what it was supposed to do, whether it was supposed to do something if he told a lie, or to force him to tell the truth, or what. But it just stayed slightly cool in his hand, with no light, no noise, no vibration. As if it were just a rock.
Draecina’s face went blank with shock.
“But… but… I thought that…”
The pointing wand wavered and drooped, slowly, until it hung at her side.
“But, if you didn’t… If I’m not cursed… Then I actually…”
She didn’t seem to be able to finish a sentence, much less explain herself.
“No. No, no, no. It’s not possible. It’s not!”
She leaped forward and snatched the stone out of his hand, hunching over it, peering at it intently, shaking it as if it were a malfunctioning watch.
“No, no, no, no, you must have tricked it somehow, you must…”
Then she straightened up, staring at him, blinking rapidly. Her eyes seemed to be watering for some reason.
“Damn you, Potter! I hate you! I hate you so much!” she screamed, hurling the Truthstone past his head with a full arm motion, where it bounced off the wall with a loud clack.
And then she stormed out of the room before Harry could even open his mouth, much less think of anything to say, leaving him alone with the mess she had made.
Wondering what that was all about.
Wondering if she had meant to miss.
As he stooped to try to sort out the mess, or at least begin to figure out even how to sort it out, the first thing his hand landed on was the Truthstone, lying under it tangled leather cord.
It didn’t seem any worse off for having been thrown against the wall. It wasn’t chipped or cracked or broken.
Except now, for some reason, it was jet black.
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After a day as terrible as the one he’d just had, Harry was more than ready to shamble back to the Gryffindor dormitory, throw himself onto his narrow bed without so much as pulling back the covers, much less undressing.
But as he climbed, the noises coming down the stairs from the boys’ section told him this probably wasn’t going to happen.
It sounded like someone ransacking one of the rooms. There were definite rummaging noises, punctuated occasionally by the sound of a thrown object bouncing off a wall or some furniture, and a muted sputtering, as if someone were trying to swear in frustration, but couldn’t, not really, because she didn’t actually know all that many bad words.
Wait.
She?
Harry bounded up the last few stairs, and the hall, and through the door. Then stopped dead in his tracks.
Even though he had already heard what was happening, what he saw was the last thing, the very last thing, the absolutely last thing, that he ever expected to find.
It was Malfoy.
She stood over Harry’s bed, surrounded by a scattering of Harry’s possession all over the floor, spilled from an overturned chest, all the drawers she has removed from his dresser.
No one else seemed to be around.
Harry was too surprised even to be properly angry. He could only sputter out the first thing that popped into his mind.
“Malfoid? What are you doing here?”
She whirled to face him, her face twisted in a furious expression. There were dust bunnies clinging to her skirt, and her hair was an absolute mess.
“Stop calling me that! My name is Draecina! Dray-see-na! Draecina Esmerelda Aribeth Malfoy! The Third!”
Harry rallied his thoughts a bit. “I’m not going to say all that. And you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? How did you even get into the Gryffindor dormitory at all?”
“Fairy lights,” she snarled at him, “The password is ‘fairy lights’. Did you really think I couldn’t get that information out of one of you weak-minded idiots any time I wanted?
“Except the last place, the very last place, that I would be caught dead is your bedr— your dorm room! If I didn’t need to find it!”
“Find what?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Potter! You know what I’m looking for! A doll! Made out of beeswax infused with moonleaf sap and three drops of my blood, which you probably collected last year when we fought the Bandersnatch. Then you dressed it in a scrap of my clothing that you stole from somewhere, and bound the neck, wrists, and ankles with three strands of your hair!”
Harry was far too surprised to say anything. He’d never seen or even heard of any doll like that, of course. But the description seemed oddly… specific.
“Does that sound familiar, Potter? I found the spell you used! It took me a year of searching through half the library, but I found it! Now tell me where the blasted doll is so I can take this curse off!”
She kicked a pile of what turned out to be Harry’s spare robes, and then looked disappointed that they didn’t fly very far.
“Malfoid —”
“Draecina!”
“— I have no idea what you’re talking about. What curse? Did someone curse you?”
“Of course they — of course you did! Just look at me!”
Harry was looking at her. Same pale blonde hair, so blonde it was more snow than gold. This was the first time Harry had ever seen so much as a strand of it out of place. Same dainty, aristocratic features, upturned nose and pointy chin. Come to think of it, those green eyes, smoldering with fury, had slight dark shadows under them for once.
And her wrists seemed the same, too. For some reason, Harry’s gaze always seemed to linger on her wrists, on how very pale and delicate they looked, on how they always seemed to pose at some elegant angle.
“I… ah… can’t stop looking at you.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“I mean, because you’re standing in the middle of my room throwing all my stuff on the floor. If there’s some sort of curse on you, I don’t see any effect. What’s it supposed to do?”
“Hah! As if you didn’t know! There’s no one here but the two of us, so there’s no point in pretending you don’t know!”
“Malf — ah, Draecina, I really have no idea what you’re talking about. How do you know you’re under a curse, and what is it that’s happening?”
Her expression shifted from rage to… well, if it was anyone but Malfoy, Harry would have called it a pout.
“Oh, I see. You just want me to say it out loud, so you can humiliate me more. Well, I won’t. And I won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing me beg. So gloat if you have to, mudblood. Get it over with. Have your fun. Then. Take. It. Off.”
“Look, I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t cursed you.”
“Last year in potions class, you turned me purple!”
“Well, yes, that. But it wore off in a few hours. And you deserved it for hiding that Strong Toad in my locker. I mean I didn’t do it this time. If someone’s really cursed you, then couldn’t it be… well, you haven’t exactly been nice to a lot people, have you? It could have been anybody.”
“No, couldn’t! It has to be you, because you’re the one that I — arrrrrrghhh!”
She trailed off in a snarl of pure frustration, and then slowly and deliberately drew her wand out of her jacket and pointed it at Harry, squinting down the length of hazelwood.
“Harry Potter, you take this curse off me right now, or I’ll… I’ll… well, I’ll think of something equally awful to do to you!”
Harry didn’t doubt it. And only now it occurred to him that, like every wand carried by every student, it wasn’t just a tool, or a device for playing harmless pranks. Wands could be weapons, and some spells you could do with one were no laughing matter.
He thought about going for his own wand, trying a simple disabling spell to buy some time to talk sense into her. It wouldn’t be impossible. He usually beat her in Wizard Dueling practice.
On the other hand, her wand was already pointed right at him, which was more than a little bit of an advantage. Maybe he should just skip right to the talking-sense part.
Not that talking sense into Draecina Malfoy was ever the easy option.
“Look, Drae, I —”
Why did he call her that? Only her friends called her that.
“I really didn’t do anything to you this time. If it’s something really bad, can’t you just go to one of the instructors for help?”
“Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you? Me humiliating myself like that. Well, fine. If you’re sooooooo innocent, and you just have nooooo idea what I’m talking about, then prove it!”
“What?”
“Prove it!”
“How I supposed to prove —”
Malfoy tore at the neck of her blouse with her other hand, and a single button popped off, bouncing away somewhere into the mess, as she came up with a small pendant, hung around her neck on a black leather cord. Her hair mussed every which way again as she yanked it over her neck and head, and thrust it at him.
“There! See? I came prepared! Take it. Go on, take it!”
“What… is that?”
He could see it clearly enough, a little white stone on a gold bezel, shaped a bit like an egg, and carved with… well, carved with something. Not for the first time, Harry wished he had paid more attention in Runes class.
“It’s a Truthstone, idiot. Don’t you know anything? Why should any decent wizarding school waste its valuable time trying to educate useless mudbloods like you if you’re not going to come out any smarter than dirt?
“You hold it, stupid. Now put your grubby fingers on it and hold it up where I can see, and tell me the filthy lie you just told me. Say it again. I dare you. Say it again so I can put a hex on you that the entire faculty won’t be able to remove for a week. Er… as soon as I pick one out, I mean.”
Bemused, Harry reached out, very slowly, and took the stone from her. It seemed unusually cool in his fingers. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he could have just grabbed her wand and disarmed her instead, or at least tried to. But however this… Truthstone… worked, if it could prove he wasn’t lying, then perhaps he could find out what on earth was going on.
He held it up in front of his face, between thumb and forefinger. Stared past it into her green eyes that still glittered with suppressed rage.
“Okay, fine, look. I didn’t know you were under a curse, I have no idea what curse you might be under, I didn’t put it on you or ask anyone else to put it on you, and I have no idea who did. Okay?”
The stone… did nothing. Harry really had no idea what it was supposed to do, whether it was supposed to do something if he told a lie, or to force him to tell the truth, or what. But it just stayed slightly cool in his hand, with no light, no noise, no vibration. As if it were just a rock.
Draecina’s face went blank with shock.
“But… but… I thought that…”
The pointing wand wavered and drooped, slowly, until it hung at her side.
“But, if you didn’t… If I’m not cursed… Then I actually…”
She didn’t seem to be able to finish a sentence, much less explain herself.
“No. No, no, no. It’s not possible. It’s not!”
She leaped forward and snatched the stone out of his hand, hunching over it, peering at it intently, shaking it as if it were a malfunctioning watch.
“No, no, no, no, you must have tricked it somehow, you must…”
Then she straightened up, staring at him, blinking rapidly. Her eyes seemed to be watering for some reason.
“Damn you, Potter! I hate you! I hate you so much!” she screamed, hurling the Truthstone past his head with a full arm motion, where it bounced off the wall with a loud clack.
And then she stormed out of the room before Harry could even open his mouth, much less think of anything to say, leaving him alone with the mess she had made.
Wondering what that was all about.
Wondering if she had meant to miss.
As he stooped to try to sort out the mess, or at least begin to figure out even how to sort it out, the first thing his hand landed on was the Truthstone, lying under it tangled leather cord.
It didn’t seem any worse off for having been thrown against the wall. It wasn’t chipped or cracked or broken.
Except now, for some reason, it was jet black.
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It's not about the money.
Money has an effect, yes, but it's a part of something bigger.
Women are genetically programmed to mate up. Not down. And not even across. Up. If she doesn't regard a man as superior to her, she generally doesn't want to have his babies.
What this means is that there is an extremely simple control dial on fertility.
More male power and status = more babies.
More female power and status = less babies.
Yes, it really is that simple.
Why? Because every species has a mating ritual, and can only breed if they can carry it out. That's why you can breed rats and chickens in cages, but not pandas. Different mating ritual.
And a critical element of the human mating ritual is "male impresses female".
Not charms. Not bribes. Definitely not respects.
Impresses.
So, if you take power, wealth, and status away from men, and give it to women, you are just plain reaching for the controls and turning down the fertility dial.
If you let men keep power, wealth and status — you don't have to give it to them because they're the ones who create it — fertility goes up.
The fertility crisis is really the equality crisis.
This idea might horrify you. You might have been taught all your life that everyone is equal, or must be, and anything else is unfair.
Well, have you looked around you at universe? Unfairness is baked into the life cycle of every living organism, not mention the food chain. Evolutionary processes don't care about fairness. They care what works.
Perhaps someday, we will be able to code DNA as easily as we code C++, and can decide what we want our instincts to be. But until that day, we are faced with a choice.
1. Stop using the political, legal, and mass media processes to force female equality, if not outright female supremacy, on the first world.
Or
2. Die out and be replaced by third world retards, who will stay on this planet fighting wars with increasingly rusty AK47s and then spears, until the next asteroid comes along.
If a productive middle class family wants to have a child, they need to have good insurance and budget out like $8,000.
If welfare dregs want to have a child, they just show up to the hospital and have it paid for by the productive middle class family.
Societies die this way.
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The Containment Right don't actually make arguments.
They just race around with a label gun, pasting random words on stuff.
Your argument isn't wrong, it's "fascist". Or "communist". Or somehow "fascist" and "communist" at the same time, or either one depending on whether the calendar day is odd or even-numbered.
The goal, of course, is avoid confronting the meaning of what you actually said.
Instead, they want to put what you said in a box with something else, then pretend that something else is the same thing, then refute the something else.
They don't want to actually engage with sentences like "White people have ethnic shared interests", or "White people have homelands".
They can't. They can't explain why "colorblind" means "Whites don't get to have the things other races can have".
So they try to put the whole topic in the Hitler Box, and then argue against the box by saying "genocide is wrong".
It's just a word game.
They'll call you anything from "snowflake", "woke", and "victim mentality" to "fascist", "Nazi", and "colonizer", sometimes on the same page.
Sometimes in the same paragraph.
Anything to avoid a five minute adult conversation.
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Devon Eriksen retweeted
I just watched Space X's solid rocket booster land itself upright, in the exact center of a concrete pad, in a very stiff crosswind, and I want all the people who cheer for socialism and communism to realize that the state has never, ever accomplished such a feat, and never could.
This level of innovation is the hallmark of a capitalist system driven by meritocracy and rewards for individual excellence. We live in the greatest country in the world and we're not going to let you drag us back into the stone age.
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One of the interesting things about the Containment Right is that their self-styled colorblindness isn't colorblind.
It does not fail to see color. It sees black and it sees brown, and red, and yellow. If you were green or purple, it could see you, too.
It can see you if your name is Krishnamurthi or Chavez, Berkowitz or Running Horse, Srisawat or Chen. It can see you if your name is Gitukalak or Obatunde. Or if you are a Hwang, or an Al-Najjar, or a Wongsadipura. On good days it even manage to notice you if your name is Nakayama.
No, the Containment Right is not colorblind now, and it never was.
It is whiteblind.
If, and only if, you are White, then to them you are a raceless, tribeless, cultureless individual atom of unspecified humanity, a part of no group or classification whatsoever, and your desires, or beliefs to the contrary must never be allowed to stand in the way of the GOP getting 3% of the Congolese-American Vote.
The truth is that colorblindness was just an idea someone had, a dumb idea, for getting rid of tribal conflicts. They thought that if nobody had an ethnicity, there would be no ethnic strife.
Problem is, root causes for conflict don't go away if you ignore them, because real things don't go away when you stop believing in them.
Not that anyone could. Race is so obviously real that the greatest advocates of colorblindness can't even make themselves colorblind.
They can't even make themselves colorblind at the very moments they are preaching colorblindness.
Because how hard they preach it at you depends entirely on what race you are.
If they can't stop themselves from seeing race, how the hell did they ever expect to stop the whole world?
No, everyone has a race. And it's important, because it's not a skin color. Skin color is just a shorthand. It's an entire genetic ancestry. It's a recipe for everything you are.
It governs everything you do, from how you metabolize lactose to whether you throw trash out the window of your car.
This is non-controversial. We know how genetics works, and have for a long time. When dealing with other species, we engage with what we know about genetics in a rational way, because we have no overriding emotional needs clouding our judgement.
This tired line of "you see race, the left sees race, therefore you are the left" is not structurally different from "you drink water, Hitler drank water, therefore you are Hitler".
Or from "George Washington saw race, Hitler saw race, therefore George Washington was Hitler".
Which I understand is what some of the Containment Right are now actually saying, almost in so many words.
You can literally quote the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence at them and they'll call it fascist.
The new right is as much into race and identity as the woke left. No thanks. The progressive left and right see skin color as the big thing. If that's the new GOP, they'll lose normal people because normies aren't race obsessed.
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To get rid of it, you have to change what's bad about it.
To change what's bad about it, you have to understand why you hate it.
You don't hate it because it's pure bad. You hate it because it's almost good. It hits some of the right notes, but fails to deliver. And that disappoints far more than getting everything wrong.
I'll explain.
This is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".
Basic plot trope. Unskilled character tries to use powerful tool, powerful tool backfires. Unskilled character learns lesson about Dunning-Kruger effect.
You don't hate that.
The unskilled character, in this case, is a cute cartoon girl with exaggerated facial expressions and affect.
You don't hate that, either. You think you do, but you don't. You actually hate something else. We'll get to that.
So, there we are. The tools are laid out on the workbench.
Sorcerer's Apprentice plot. Cute cartoon girl.
There is nothing wrong with the tools.
The problem is that there are TWO Sorcerer's Apprentice plots here.
The first is cute cartoon girl mishandling magic.
But the second is unskilled filmmaker mishandling Sorcerer's Apprentice plot and cute cartoon girl.
See, the vital bit of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, what makes it narratively satisfying, is that the cocksure and unskilled character gets a lesson about messing with powerful tools carelessly.
She doesn't have to learn it right away. Perhaps, over the course of the film, you want to run this subplot several times before it sinks in.
But the lesson has to be delivered to her. It has to be there. The consequence has to be negative.
In the moment when the scary monster appears, the monster must be scary. And since the tool we have selected for conveying emotional meaning is "hyperexpressive cartoon girl", she must display the appropriate emotion.
She must be scared.
Otherwise, the monster is not scary, the consequence is not negative, the lesson is not delivered, and the subplot falls flat for the sake of a badly-told joke.
It's okay to have her say the line. It's not a great line, but it's not so terrible that the scene can't survive it.
What the scene actually cannot survive is that the emotionally expressive girl, who up to now has displayed the appropriate emotions that told the story (mostly nervousness mixed with callow arrogance), has suddenly broken away from the appropriate storytelling reaction.
If you want to have her say the line, make her look and sound scared when she says it.
If you want her not to be scared when she says the line, have her say it later, when she has escaped the monster.
If you want her to not be scared at all, don't have a scary negative consequence like a monster, but a humiliating negative consequence. She can say the line just that way, with zero fear, if she has just been drenched in mud and there is a frog sitting on her head.
You can use the tools any way you want. You just have to know how to do so, and stick to your plan.
It is okay to tell a story about Catholic space knights fighting demons. It is okay to tell a story about a talking pig who plays the saxophone.
But if the pig shows up to play a sax solo in the middle of a demonic incursion, then the audience isn't going to enjoy that very much.
Even if they like stories about Catholic space knights AND they like stories about talking pigs.
You may love fish, and everyone likes ice cream, but if I serve you salmon ice cream, only two or three weirdos are going to be willing to even try it.
And even they probably won't enjoy it very much.
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AI doomers and Defective Altruists are effectively the same group, because they have the same goal and the same method.
The goal is power and attention.
The method is as Eric describes, with a twist.
CS Lewis once pointed out that "those who those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience".
However, this is still an imperfect formula for tyranny, because we, having our own voices, can eventually stand up and say "you do not speak for me, and you do not know what is good for me".
Lewis's recipe for tyranny is nightmarish, but it is still imperfect. The tyrant may not be interrupted by his own conscience, but he can be contradicted by his constituents.
The Defective Altruists have refined Lewis's formula.
Instead of demanding power for the good of others who currently exist, they demand power on behalf of all future generations of humanity.
This is a perfect pseudomoral weapon.
Future generations are of hypothetically infinite size and importance, and therefore can be infinitely prioritized over anyone who actually exists today.
More useful still, future generations do not, by definition, currently exist. They cannot speak, and they can therefore never say "you do not speak for me".
They are the perfect political constituency.... of infinite importance, always supportive, and completely silent.
All that a Defective Altruist/ AI Doomer must do, in order to give himself an foolproof excuse for anything he wanted to do, absolutely anything at all, is to construct a "rational" scenario whereby his actions would protect future generations from some bugbear he made up.
Most of what they do right now is harangue, because their one saving grace is that they are cowards, but ask yourself this...
How would AI Doom rhetoric have to change, if they decided to sack up and start murdering engineers?
The answer is "it wouldn't".
So why do they act like this?
To answer that, we needn't look further than Wikipedia.
Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive attention-seeking behaviors, usually beginning in adolescence or early adulthood, including inappropriate seduction and an excessive desire for approval.
People with HPD have a high desire for attention, make loud and inappropriate appearances, exaggerate their behaviors and emotions, and crave stimulation.[1] They very often exhibit pervasive and persistent sexually provocative behavior, express strong emotions with an impressionistic style, and can be easily influenced by others. Associated features can include egocentrism, self-indulgence, continuous longing for appreciation, and persistent manipulative behavior to achieve their own wants.
Histrionic personality disorder is also linked with hyperbolic language and hyperbolic communication.
This the Toaster Fucker Problem all over again.
Under internet-less conditions, neurotic people are forced to go outside and touch grass, which is actually a slang term for interacting with people who aren't cherry-picked for being similar to them.
But when all meaningful social interactions occur, or at least can occur, on the internet, normal people have normal interactions, people with special interests and hobbies can meet others who like the same things... but insane people can seek out other insane people and form communities where they think their insanity is normal and healthy.
The human brain is hardwired to calculate odds for a group of about 150 people. We call it Dunbar's number. It is spectacularly bad at computing odds for larger groups of people. This is why we have actuaries, who use mathematical models instead of their own intuition.
If you want to fuck toasters, and you are surrounded by 150 other people who want to fuck toasters, you will be absolutely convinced that everyone wants to fuck a toaster, and all those puzzled and disgusted people outside your circle of toaster fuckers are just denying and repressing their own toaster lust.
Except when the organizing principle of your 150+ group isn't toasters, but histrionic personality disorder, it will repeatedly be swept by new hysterias and obsessions.
Whatever gets the most traction.
The AI doomers must be defeated because infinite fear demands infinite repression.
They've created a moral singularity by imagining an event with effectively infinite negative value - the self-extinction of humanity - that demands they take coercive action to prevent it now.
The extinction is uncertain, but the doomers have Pascal-mugged themselves into treating it as though it's certain. But the coercion they want to use to prevent it is not uncertain at all.
Condider this: if recursive self-improvement in AIs is possible at all, how are they going to prevent everyone, forever, from achieving RSI in an AI?
In the most benign version of their future, you can't have a computer or GPU that's above a certain maximum power level. Also, open source AI models and open source development in general have to die - it would be too difficult to close off paths that could lead to RSI unless computers are licensed, monitored, and crippled.
But the actual outcome would be much, much worse. Because excuses for coercion and repression, however well intended, attract people for whom repression is the goal, not just a regrettable necessity.
We just spent a decade watching that kind of power-seeker try to turn society into a totalitarian panopticon over what they called "hate speech". What do you suppose they would do with a much bigger rhetorical club labeled "species extinction"?
The implication of believing doomer eschatology is a boot grinding on our human faces, forever.
I do not submit.
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Devon Eriksen retweeted
My best friend’s husband lost his job three years ago. There were major cuts at his company and he was laid off. He received three months of severance, spent two years looking for a new job. Several times he was hired for jobs that ended up being scams. He ended up so demoralized that he’s now battling severe depression. They have a 13 yo son and two teenage daughters. Where are the jobs for the hard working men who just want to take care of their families? Where is the party standing up for our men? Why are they being vilified, humiliated on national television? What message are we sending? That they don’t matter, that their families don’t matter, that they will always be seen as the perpetrators and never deserving of an ounce of compassion. Everything Paul says here needs to be said, over and over. Enough is enough.
Ms. Sanders, I am supremely mild-mannered, both irl and online. People with profoundly LW, all the way to hard RW, politics befriend me because I’m not overtly openly political.
That I vehemently hate you and your entire political project ought to tell you something. It won’t, though—because you’ll never read this.
I could have justifiably been on full medical disability (not just welfare!) for years now. I have a debilitating terminal illness and every day is misery. Instead, I have broken my body and spirit working 2-4 jobs—all for half that (paltry) money to be taxed away and devoured by the migrant hordes you bring in for your corporate masters. I have watched my own checks bounce and still not sought after government assistance. I’ve borrowed money from friends to pay for groceries.
And so you make advertising claiming my demographic [white men] are weak and lazy, and then you double down: lying as though that isn’t what you did?
I’d tell you to go to hell, but I think it’s likely you will without any urging on my part. You would want no part in Heaven, judging by what you think of your countrymen. To you, I am filth and detritus. Very well: I must, I suppose, merely reciprocate in kind. But I do hope that before you shuffle off this mortal coil, you never are faced with the suffering you’ve inflicted upon others: for your heart and mind, I think, could not bear it.
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Okay, can I get a job as a software engineer?
No, we have infinite hordes of Indian H1-Bs for that.
How about something in the manufacturing industry?
No, we exported that to China.
What about one of those new jobs the Trump administration is so proud of creating?
Sorry, 94% of those are for women.
What if I went to college and got another degree?
We've kinda been focusing our admissions on underrepresented minorities lately. You know, the ones who make up 70ish percent of the global population.
So, what exactly do you want me to do?
Well, we do have one opening for a young White man.
Oh? What's that?
We need someone to play a lazy welfare slob in a political ad.
Ummmm... okay, I guess...
Here, smear this Cheeto dust on your shirt.
You pay taxes to cover welfare for people who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement.
If you’re young, healthy, and get government assistance, you should work, go to school, or volunteer.
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Neat review modality by a fellow author. I like the whole stick-man thing.
The latest episode of 'Let's Read an Indie' is live, this time looking at Theft of Fire by @Devon_Eriksen_
I receive this book as an ARC copy from his wife @AnEriksenWife and very glad for it as we join Marcus Warnoc as he is forced into a dangerous space heist. Link in Comments
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The claim that "heritage Americans" are not a real thing, or not an important thing, is not "Constitutionalist", because it does not survive a careful reading of the first paragraph of that Constitution.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
From where does the Constitution derive its authority?
"We, the People."
Who are "We, the People"? Well, clearly the people of America, and clearly the people who made up America at the time. Any other conclusion requires absurd mental gymnastics.
For what purpose does the Constitution wield its authority?
To secure the blessings of liberty for "We, the People", and for their "Posterity".
"Posterity" does not mean their butts. It means their descendants.
To deny the existence, or the importance, of "Heritage Americans" is to deny the very authority from which the Constitution derives, and the very purpose it was created to serve.
Do that, and whatever else you are, you are not a Constitutionalist.
Like most other American traditions, the Constitution is now being worn as a skinsuit by subversives, who demand its share of respect while ignoring its literal content.
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There's a joke I like to tell in a usually-futile attempt to fix people's thinking.
It involves a policeman stopping a drunk who's looking for his car keys under a street lamp.
Turns out he dropped them three blocks that way, but "the light is better over here".
oh here it is again
i talked about this a year ago. how republicans have moved their anti-welfare rhetoric away from black “welfare queens” to young white men (gamers, to be exact for some reason?) because even they know who the acceptable target is nowadays
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Devon Eriksen retweeted
Every time you see one of these guys unconscious on the sidewalk or building a nest out of garbage, keep in mind that he will consume four or five times the economic resources you will this year.
People think “homelessness” is a matter of housing, but every time this guy takes a ride in an ambulance, which he probably does every few weeks, it will cost the city six months of your rent.
Hundreds of thousands of tax dollars will be spent on outreach, healthcare, criminal justice response and social services and none of it will do anything.
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Whedonization. From an entire generation imitating Firefly.
Thing is, some of the characters in Firefly were written as a solidified, coherent team who bantered with each other as part of their relationship. The characters who weren't part of that close-knit group, who were just thrown into the ship by happenstance, didn't talk like that.
For the Joss Whedon of the Firefly era, this was just characterization through dialogue.
Problem is, midwits looked at it and saw the quips, not the characterization. So they began filling all their character dialogue with them, appropriate or not.
In fact, Joss Whedon himself saw that this was becoming popular, and started Whedonizing his own work, becoming a dumbed-down version of himself.
The main character of Project Hail Mary is, in fact, a spiritual redditor... above average intelligence combined with an utter lack of integrity, character, and courage.
He's intended to be that way.
There is, however, one small problem. Characterization doesn't just have to capture who the character normally is. It must also capture who the character is at that moment.
When a cowardly redditor is confronted by something that makes him nervous, he will hide behind a quipy joke, and pretend to take nothing seriously at all, so he can avoid embarrassment, hipster style.
But when he is terrified out of his tiny mind, his sense of humor, such as it is, will utterly vanish, and he will whine and cry and look around for help and sympathy.
While you may be a bit overdosed on superficially clever repartee at the moment, I suspect you would not mind it quite so much if it was dosed only where appropriate, to serve character building.
The deeper lesson here is that story elements aren't glue-on decorations that you can just slap in because people happen to like them. Things you put in a story must be parts of a coherent whole. They have to serve the story in some way.
If they don't, what happens is your brain says "this is just here because the author liked it".
And then your brain says "oh, yeah, there's an author, this is just a story, none of this is real".
That's why this sensation feels like being "kicked out of the story". Your suspension of disbelief has been shattered, and you're no longer inside the story, living in it, imagining it as if it were real.
You're back on your couch, looking at words on a screen.
This is why writing fiction is so goddamned difficult... you have to imagine, at every moment, the mindset, reactions, and feelings of readers you can't see.
Got 4 chapters into Project Hail Mary and I have to tap out . Whole book is just a really long Reddit post . Anyone have any sci-fi recs that are the complete opposite of this Bazinga! ass novel
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